Housing Commission - Regular Meeting

This is the Housing Commission meeting on May 28, 2026, 5.30 p.m. We have a quorum of three commissioners, so we can get the meeting started. Start with the agenda item number one. Start with the roll call? Sure. Okay. Let's start with the roll call.

Mr. Cunningham?

Yes.

Mr. Harkin?

So.

I said yes, yes, yes, for the record commissioners we coffee and commissioner jindy are absent.

Okay. The agenda, I don't know the one is approval of minutes from March 26, 2026. Any motion to approve the I can move to approve the minutes. A second? A second. Okay. So the minutes are approved?

Thank you.

Okay.

Commissioner Cunningham?

Aye. Approved.

Commissioner Coffey is absent. Commissioner Gindy is absent. Vice Chair Jones? Aye. Commissioner Ryan? Aye. Motion carries unanimously.

Do we have any postponements?

No postponements.

Next would be oral communications.

We have no speakers, Chair.

No speakers. Okay. Next item, all business.

We have no all business.

We don't have any. Okay. Okay, moving on to the new business. Let's see, agenda item number two, we have the fiscal year 2026-27 Community Development Block Grant Draft Annual Action Plan. So the action is for to approve the document.

Yes, Madam Chair, we have a presentation support for you. Okay, great. Evelyn Mesa, assistant housing coordinator and our is full of the annual action plans. Tonight we're asking the housing commission to approve with this lawyer 2026 2027 CDBG annual action plan for the middle to HUD. First a little background on the community development block grant program. This is an annual entitlement grant fund issued by the federal government HUD, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, uses a formula to allocate and award funds to jurisdictions, and these funds are intended to primarily benefit low- and moderate-income persons. In order to receive these funds, cities are required to submit consolidated plans and annual action plans to HUD. The consolidated plan is a more long-term plan. that determines the housing and community development goals based on identified needs in the community. And the annual action plan is a year-to-year implementation plan that outlines how these goals will be met in the upcoming year. Currently, our current consolidated plan covers a five-year period from 2025 through 2030, and we're in the second consolidated plan year. So the annual action plan includes the projects and activities that will be enacted in the upcoming fiscal year starting on July 1st. And it also lists the organizations that will be awarded the CDBG allocations and it tracks additional funding distribution from other sources that will be used to further these consolidated plan goals. This is essentially formalizing the funding recommendations that were made by the Housing Commission and approved by the City Council back in April. Great. So this table, which I know is a little hard to see, but it is included in the annual action plan. It includes all of the consolidated plan goals along with the funding allocations. And as you can see, it covers all funding sources, not only CDBG. So it includes DMR, Affordable Housing Fund, HSG, and Family Funding as well. And just for a little breakdown on each of these schools, our first one is homeowner rehabilitation. This includes making critical home repairs for lower income and disabled homeowners who wouldn't otherwise be able to make these repairs. Also provides repairs for accessible features for disabled and elderly homeowners who otherwise might not be able to stay in their homes. Next, we have affordable rental construction, which includes the construction of affordable rental housing units for extremely low and low-income residents. The city is committing funding to one affordable housing project, which will produce 249 rental units. Our next goal is the community development goal, which will include facility upgrades to kitchens and bathrooms in low-income rental units at the Vista Village affordable housing apartments. The Braille and Elderly Services School provides services to elderly and disabled residents. These supportive services may include activities geared to maximizing their social experience and the mental stimulation of elderly clients, and also improves and sustains their mental and physical function and their quality of life, as well as providing legal assistance. Next, we have services for low income families and homeless populations. This goal includes providing supportive services, landlord tenant counseling, dispute resolution services to low income families and unhoused residents. And then finally, our planning and administration goal just covers overall administration for our CBPG program. And as mentioned, we include all of the activities to provide a full picture activities of the city's funding for the year. But the annual action plan is ultimately a HUD requirement, which means it's primarily focused on CDBG funding, how we allocate these funds, track them and report on them. So the following is the CDBG allocations. For Live Oak Adult Day Services, we'll be funding it at $15,000 through the year. West Valley Community Services, the CARE program is being funded at $33,300. So this is for public services. which are 15% of the CDBG funding allocation. Next, we have the funding for the CDBG capital housing projects. $107,500 is allocated for the Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley homeowner repair and rehab program. And finally, we have $160,000 allocated to West Valley Community Services for their Vista Village facilities upgrades. And to put it there, we also have $64,500 allocated for the planning and administration. In terms of our timeline, we're on track to submit by the June 15th deadline to HUD. And this is following the NOFA application period, which closed back in February, and the Housing Commission recommendations, as well as the City Council funding approval. So our next step is to get approval for this annual action plan today, and we're ready to submit to HUD. We do have a recommended motion for you, and I'm available to answer any questions you might have about the plan. And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you. open for questions first clarifying questions from commission i'm sorry first is clarifying questions from the commission yeah yeah the commissioners uh i have a list of things i would like to ask but help me if i have questions as well but um so i'll get started okay um I just had certain items. I thought they were inconsistent when I reviewed it. It may just be a typographic error. So can I point them out?

Yeah.

Okay. There was the public comment period of 30-day. There was different dates. In some areas, it was April 24 to 28, May 28. And in one place, it was April 27 to May 28. And then there was another which said April 27 to May 27.

Uh, I'll double check that, but the correct one should be April 27th until today.

28, right? So there were yeah. So the 3 different, uh, date ranges.

Oh, I can double in different areas.

Okay. So it should be 27 to 28, right? Okay. And then, um, it was also in AP 15. There was the CDBG program income was listed as 7,944, whereas in AP 90, it was listed as zero. I can imagine. So what's in AP 15 as a projection? Uh-huh.

program income that we expect to get through the year. And then the 80-90 is essentially as we go into the new year, how much unexpected program income do we have at that time? Okay. Yeah. So it's actually two different things it's measuring, right? One is an estimate of what we expect to receive over the entire course of next year. One is what are we carrying over going in from this year? I see. Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay.

So there was an attachment of the 2017-2018 Housing Commission Resolution 17-2, right? That's the old grant amount and funding caps. So what's the purpose of attaching that if it doesn't apply? I don't know.

That's a contingency plan that was passed by the Housing Commission. Basically on the question of what do we do, when the estimates of our CDBG grant don't match what HUD ultimately gives us. And what it basically spells out is we try our best to match the Housing Commission's recommendation. When it comes to the public services, if they award us more, we proportionally award each one more. If they give us less, we proportionally award each one of them less. And then when it comes to construction projects, if we don't have enough money, then we fully fund the most important one, basically, and we have to put the other ones on the back burner, right? Because construction is a little bit different. If we don't fully fund them, then they just don't happen, right? And so that contingency plan, we've kind of kept it going because that's a problem that kind of, exists in the design of the CDBG program, right? We're required to make these funding recommendations before HUD actually gives us the money. And so sometimes it's never exact, right? It's never our best estimates, but it's never going to be exactly the same number. So there's always going to be even more. We need the contingency funds to say, okay, even though we went to the commission with this number.

Yeah.

We have contingency plans so that when it's different, we know how to do contracts with that.

But the thing is, that was approved almost 10 years ago, right?

Are you interested in potentially reopening that contingency plan?

Shouldn't be asking more money. I'm just saying, like, with inflation and so forth, you want to ask for more. Oh, I would love to ask for more money.

but they would just be like, no, it's a formula grant, and that's what you get. But if you're interested in reopening the contingency plan, if you want to redesign it, that's something that the commission is always open to do. That's interesting.

All right, thank you. Yeah. Oh, show that AP 20, right, the 249 unit that Wolf wrote, project. So I think it says start of construction. It said between 2026 to 2027. If you look at the description, it's not construction, right? It's just a funding happens in 2026, 2027. Right.

Yeah, I think we also included.

But it's listed as construction, that's why.

Oh, I see, okay. Yeah, I think we also noted that construction will take place through the consolidated time period.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this is like the AP 20 item, line item two. It says, yeah, it says construction, that's why. I'm excited about that. And there were two other things, like the homeless count, homeless count. There was a 48 number and also 101 number. So. Well, what I mean, if if the study was based or the allocation was based on the old 48 number. Should how is that reflect the newer 101?

Fortunately, a formula grant is does not take into account our account. It's it's really more of just a. us knowing what is the change in the population. So the 48 number is from I think the 2024 count, and 101 is the 2025 count.

So it just- As you said, yeah, 101 is a recent count, right? Yeah.

Sorry?

The 101 is a recent count, the data time, yeah.

Yes, yes, December of 2025, yeah.

But our goals and the funding allocation can't reflect the new one. It still reflects the... Yeah.

Our goals were implemented in the con plan design, which was done... Well, it was ran in 2024, right? For the 20th idea going onward. I mean, we have new data that we can address, right, in an actual plan when we want to talk about fomenting, right? Because, you know, priorities change, right? Yeah, yeah. But yeah, so anything that references the comp plan is going to have the old number, and anything that doesn't have the old numbers.

Okay. Otherwise, my only thing is it's an amazing report. It's very well written, and I think it also ties back to, it focuses on low-income houses and special needs populations, which is really critical.

Thank you, Chair. I do have a couple of questions. Page 14 and 19 of Table 2 talks about the Housing Trust Silicon Valley, calling it a CDFI. I didn't know what was a CDFI, so I looked it all up and found out it's a community development finance institution, and that they provide funds separately from, say, the banks and the AND CONVENTIONAL DESK, AND THEY PROVIDE BRIDGE CAPITAL. AND MY QUESTION IS, HOW DOES SUPERTINO WORK WITH THIS PARTICULAR ORGANIZATION TO ENSURE THAT DEVELOPERS ARE AWARE OF THIS PARTICULAR FUND?

YEAH. We maintain relationships with all these different regional government and nonprofit organizations when it comes to this kind of housing ecosystem. They invite us for funding for our BMR program, for example. We also direct them towards other available funds to try to maximize you know, the project success, right? So when, for example, Mary Avenue, right, applied to us for funding back in 2025, we also introduced them to the housing trust, the Silicon Valley, right? And, you know, basically shared performance. So, like, what can you guys also put into this project, right? Like, we're supporting this project. What can you guys also contribute? And I've contributed, right? I think about $3 million to the Mary Avenue project.

Wow.

Yeah.

I wasn't aware of that, and I don't know if any of the other housing commissioners were aware of that or even how that whole system works. I had heard on a number of occasions that ELI housing specifically is a layer cake, but I only know a couple of the layers. So apparently I've discovered this new one, and I appreciate your describing it for me. I'm very pleased that we have had Mary Avenue for that as well as, I think, is coming forward. It does sound like for anyone, any developer to get the interest of a CDFI loan or bridge gap, that they have to have already achieved some success with their, they can't just come in with an application and say, here, you know, here, housing trust, Silicon Valley. They have to have already achieved come to a city to get something. So I don't know what that something is. It's something like in the case of Mary Avenue, they did get land as well as funding. I don't know if land is always necessary or if just funding from the city would be necessary.

Well, they want to basically bridge the gap on shovel-ready projects, right? They don't want to just find a dream and then potentially all of them go to nowhere. So yeah, typically when the housing trust gets involved, they've already got a proposal, a performer, they've got a plan, right? And they've even got like a budget made up and they just say like, oh, we need this much to bridge the gap. And then that is where housing trust will really come in.

Okay. I do have a follow-on question if you don't mind with that, because we have a housing element, which is any number of sites available for developers to decide they have an application to come in. So, I guess the big question is, is it only nonprofit developers that usually get into this mix, or does a regular developer, you know, what I mean, I think you know what I mean, because we have several applicants approved to build townhomes with, the low market rate purchase. But we haven't had any for the partner type units. And they have all said that they don't have funding available to them. So what are those developers not? able to apply to, I mean, they've got something, right? They've got the land and they've got the plan.

It's almost always going to be a nonprofit developer, right? Housing trusts and the city BMR fund, right? We're both really interested in finding those 100% affordable projects, right? Not just like an inclusionary market rate project that is contractually obliged, right? To provide a certain percentage of their unit as affordable. And really it's the 100% affordable projects that even need THE SUPPORT IN THE FIRST PLACE, RIGHT?

I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT SO BEFORE ALL OF THESE APPLICANTS SAID THEY COULDN'T GET ANY FUNDING EXCEPT FOR TOWNHOMES THAT THEY COULD ONLY GET FUNDING, I MEAN, THEY COULDN'T GET IT FOR ANY APARTMENT KINDS OF UNITS. THAT'S MY QUESTION IS AT WHAT POINT DOES THE CDFI START SAYING, OH, MY GOODNESS, I GUESS IT'S NOT JUST you know, the other kind, the nonprofits who need help. Actually, it sounds like everybody needs help if they want to build anything other than townhomes.

And that just might be a gap in the financial lending structure, right? Where you've got CDFIs to help low-income affordable housing, and you've got your conventional bank lenders that can help with your migrating developments, but you want to see a return on investment. So they want to go for townhomes and things like that that can turn a profit really quickly. And then maybe there's something in the middle that doesn't exist yet, right, that can maybe... I'll just suggest just more rental housing in general. I don't know if that exists yet, but that's a good question to be asking.

Okay. Okay. Thank you for saying it was a good question to be asking because I kept thinking, what am I missing? Where in here am I not understanding what all these townhome applicants are saying? Because it's all the same. And yet they're all businessmen and women. And anyway, thank you for that answer. It was very helpful and I hope it helped. everyone else understand it as well. I did have another question, but if you had some things that you wanted to. Go ahead.

So on page 43, we talk about what's expected for funding about $322,000. We also refer to 50,000 expended funds. When the need is so great, why do we carry a surplus over here when we know that some of the future evolutions are based on one formulae, right? That doesn't depend on prior year carryover, but nevertheless, the growth in need is pretty exponential, especially when we refer back to 50 versus 101 or 48 versus 101 unhoused residents. So Why do we carry that over?

The carryover is the result of actually a construction project finishing under budget. So the fire alarm project is nearing completion and they were able to do it somehow without expending all the money we reawarded them. So we are expecting some of that money to basically become unencumbered once that project completes. And so that's why we are including that as carryover to be reawarded out for another project.

Um, question. Yeah. So does that count against the formulaic future allocation?

No, no. Yeah. We just need to make sure we spend it in time. There's like, there's a, these timeliness shot on the fire inside gives us, but it doesn't, it doesn't make us receivable out of the future. Okay.

I have one more question. So the formulaic assessment, can you help me understand that a little bit better?

Yeah, it's based on two things. Number one, what is your city's population size? And then of that population size, how much of it is low income? So if you're a big city with a really, really, really big low income population, you'll get a massive CDBG award, right? Big cities in general will get bigger awards, more than small cities. And then rich cities will get less than poor cities.

And have we tracked it?

Um, like, pretty stable or pretty much around this 300. Thousand number over the years that I've seen.

That doesn't sound like it's not.

No, no, they don't because their formula does not account for goes in the house. There's actually a different. Federal. grant that does that. It's called ESG, and that's managed by the county, actually. Yeah.

Okay, I do have a couple more questions. Okay, I had, oh, this one is a simple one, and then I'll go back to the one that's a more... Page 48, it says that we are going to attempt 70% instead of a higher percent of overall benefits. So could you explain to me what the overall benefit is and why we're going for 70% and not? Page 48. It's this chart here. 100 program specific.

Oh, no, we are going for 100. So this is our answer on the side. We're saying we're going for 100%. They're saying at a minimum, do 70%. And we said, we're going for 100.

But right here, it says it's any more than 70.

I mean, that's just to give us, you know, some flexibility, right?

Like if you don't need it, they don't give you back because you didn't get 100, you only got 80%.

Yeah, we will, we're saying we're at 80%. Right, we will meet the overall benefit by going for 100. Okay, I understand.

So the other question I have is a little more complicated.

It's on page, page 37, where we're talking about homeless and other special needs.

And we already talked about that Cupertino has 45 homeless residents before and now the new count is 101. And in here, we state that there are no emergency shelters or transitional housing in Cupertino. On page 38, there was a project summary and the report stated that Cupertino has a rotating safe parking program with two host sites. Do those spaces come anywhere close to 85 or, that's the low one, I mean 101? Each of those sites accommodates 25. Okay, and are they all operating at the same time then, so it's really 75?

No, so they rotate throughout the year, so those 25 individuals might be just rotating sites. Okay, so it's really only 25. Yes, this is a program that involves other cities. So there's, it's, I believe, operates up to 10 months out of the year.

Okay, 10 months out of the year, which leaves two months where there isn't any. And then there's 25 out of the 45 of our people, not speaking of what other cities might have homeless residents as well, if I'm accurately understanding you. So... I was thinking about that, and it turns out, well, I was thinking about that when I also remembered that not too long ago, the city passed a no overnight parking ordinance for anyone over 72 hours. And I thought, wow, they're not having a safe parking lot. That's pretty draconian, right? To take somebody's house and take it away from them when it's the only house they have. end up preaching. I will go to what my next point is, is that there was an article in the Bay Area News, and it talks about the fact that our supervisor, is that the right one? Our supervisor, Margaret Fabi-Ferda, convened a meeting in April, and SHE CONVENED 50 CITY COUNTY NONPROFIT BUSINESS LEADERS IN PALO ALTO TO CONSIDER STRATEGIES FOR A REGIONAL APPROACH TO SAFE PARKING SPACES. SO WHAT I'M THINKING IS THAT HOPEFULLY WE'LL BE ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN THAT AND THAT'S SOMETHING THAT I WOULD LIKE TO AND I MIGHT JUST DEPENDING ON WHAT HAPPENS WITH THIS CONVERSATION. Maybe we can add it to our agenda in the future to talk about this because it's something that is as high as the supervisor. And there's an organization called Move Mountain View, and it has a successful program. And one of the women who was in that program, she lived there two and a half years. So that takes you 25 years. your 25 units periodically throughout the year. And it didn't wanna have her at all. She couldn't have done anything if she were in our . So I just wanted to share that with you that since this is an ongoing group that is getting together under the auspices of the County Supervisor that opened the Cupertino is going to be involved in that and that we can stand up safe parking spot, and considering that all have fewer homeless people than many, many places have, that we could have one big enough to help as many as we need. Because they were talking about the fact that this county has a bunch of different kinds of housing things that they do, and this safe parking one has the fewest of the lots available to help those and um so the idea is this this isn't like a goal like everybody gets it but it's a strategy to help people who who are need that help now and then as you're getting that better housing uh apartment uh like that later on so i wanted to bring that up and just say that um i hope we can strengthen our existing one i think our existing one should definitely kept i mean People that are using it are needing that help, and they're using that help. And I want that to stay there. It's just I would like to, I hope that that's stronger. A question that came out of this, though, was that after the program, there was an MOU signed, and I forget what, but there was an MOU signed with us and other West Valley cities to come up with a plan for emergency shelters and transitional housing, and that that work is finished. And that was in here as well. And it said period. It says there are going to be more action taken after that. And I didn't know, because it didn't say, whether Cupertino was going to be involved in that next step of taking further actions to work on that.

We produced a council informational memo on the results of that study in March, at least. And then the city council wants to agendize further action if they want to join the implementation plan, that'll be at their discretion.

Okay. Is that something that we might then, as the housing commission, even recommend that we be involved in that? I mean, we're talking about emergency housing and transitional housing. And the only emergency housing we have in the city, as I understand it, is Main Street. And that's wonderful, and it's been funded for a long time through one of our fundings. Anyway, just thinking that that might be something, I guess I should talk to our fellow commissioners too, that might be something that we would want to ask the city to consider, is to be on that action.

I think the housing commission as a whole want to have that discussion seven conservative. She or she can offer some sort of no matter to city council. Okay position as a whole is going to do that that's the world of the mission.

I read the memo that Nikki mentioned that status of homelessness in Cupertino in March 2026 was uploaded in the city website. That was really useful. I mean, given the facts, basically. So, yeah, we could table it as an agenda item in the future to discuss more if we can come up with strategies of what can be done. That can be definitely done. Yeah.

Okay. And the other thing that having to do with the same topic is that later on, under inter-agenda setting, I do have something written up for considering as an agenda item for the future. And so if you would like to see what I have written up.

Let's save that for a future and send it up.

Last thumbs up. Yeah. Oh, you mean just save it till later? Yeah.

We'll have that.

public comment we have two speakers dean everson and linda hitchcock our first speaker is dean oh and we have one speaker remotely georgia bay seal so dean and then just one sec while i bring up the timer

Okay, go ahead. Thank you. I'm Deanne Everton with Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley. And I wanted to just take an opportunity to thank you all for your support of the work that we've done over the years with Cumbertino residents to help keep them affordably housed and to invest in our affordable housing stock that we do have. It's said that the most affordable home is the one that you live in, emphasizing the benefits of a secure place to build equity and live without housing insecurity. It's also proven that home preservation is the best and most affordable housing option for many low-income households, costing about 26 times more to build a new affordable housing unit than it is to repair an existing one. The work we do is a relatively low investment to restore homes to safe and healthy living environments so that people can raise their families there, age in place, grow old, and hopefully thrive in place, and to be able to keep that hard-earned wealth asset in their family for generations to come. The repairs that we make are not cosmetic. They are vital repairs that help to store significant pieces of the home, like replacing a roof, that is failing or unsafe plumbing and electrical systems or installing modifications like grab bars, ramps, or a wheelchair lift. But even more important than the types and number of repairs that we do are the long-term impacts. Eighty percent of our clients report less financial stress. Seventy-five percent said their mental health 65% felt more included in their neighborhood with 75% expressing an increased pride in their home. And 36% said their health improved after the repairs that we did. So again, I want to thank you for believing in the work that we do, repairing one Cupertino home at a time, and we look forward to our continuing partnership.

Okay, our next speaker is Linda Hitchcock.

Hi, I'm Linda Hitchcock. I am with Live Oak Adult Day Services. I'm the ambassador of clients and partnerships. And I am here representing our executive director, Izumi Asakawa, who had to go to Japan kind of quickly. So I'm just gonna read this and heartfelt from me also. I represent Adult Day Services. We have been a trusted provider for older adults in Santa Clara County for four decades. And I'm here to express our sincere appreciation and to request continued support. The older adults we serve among the Cupertino's most valuable. Our participants are seniors with dementia, who want to remain in their homes and stay connected to their community, but who cannot do so without daily support. Our organization provides the support, structured programming, socialization that's embedded in all of our programming, health monitoring, and respite for family caregivers who would otherwise face impossible choices between work and care. CDBG recognizes people like our organization. It explicitly prioritized housing stability, supportive services, and investments that benefit extremely low and moderate income households. For our participants, housing stability and daily care are inseparable. The results speak for themselves. Last program year, CDBG funds helped Live Oaks serve 42 families in Cupertino. There are individuals who were able to stay safely in their homes. and families who had a lifeline. That may sound like a modest number, but I can tell you that for each of those people and their families, this program providing six hours a day respite was everything. Commissioners, this funding matters beyond what it directly provides. When a city like Cupertino invests in our organization like CDBG, it sends a signal to the broader philanthropic community. Your vote of confidence serves as a powerful endorsement. It allows us to approach funders, foundations, individual donors, and other stakeholders. funders with credibility. It tells him that Live Oak has been vetted, trusted, and deemed worthy of public investment. That in turn unlocked additional dollars that stretch every public dollar further. City support catalyzes our funding. We also want to say thank you. Thank you to the City of Cupertino's ongoing partnership for the consultative process that shaped this plan. and for your commitment to Cupertino's most valuable residents. Live Oak is proud to be part of this community of care.

Thank you.

Thank you, Linda. Our next speaker is Georgia Vasil. Welcome, Georgia.

Good evening, Georgia Basile, Directing Attorney of Senior Adults Legal Assistance, or SALA as you know us. We provide free legal services to Cupertino residents, 60 or older, targeting clients that are low-income, or at risk of abuse or loss of independence. We provide our services locally at appointments at Cupertino Senior Center and by phone for clients that cannot leave their homes or with emergencies. We are a current human service grantee and we thank you. Your funding supports expanded availability of our services to Cupertino seniors. We were mentioned in the 2026-27 action plan under elderly services, so I'd like to share with you what we do. As attorneys, we address a range of critical matters impacting our clients' lives. For example, we address income insecurity by assisting clients with problems involving public benefits they rely on to meet their basic needs. And these are legal problems related to Social Security, SSI, Medicare, and Medi-Cal. We address housing instability by assisting clients worried about eviction, clients needing reasonable accommodations in their housing, or clients whose housing is otherwise in jeopardy. We address loss of autonomy by assisting clients with very basic legal planning for the future to help them age in place by assisting them to appoint someone they trust now to step in and manage their affairs when they can no longer do so. And we address elder abuse and domestic violence by assisting clients that are victims of abuse, usually by someone living in their homes or someone they know. We cannot charge fees for our services or accept fee-generating cases under the Older Americans Act. The primary way we support our services is through grants like your Human Services Grant, and we very much appreciate that. Your funding has helped us provide the highest level of service possible to Cupertino residents this year, and we thank you so much for that support.

Thank you, Georgia. Our next speaker is Carol Kahn.

Hi, I'm Carol Kahn, the Executive Director of Project Sentinel. We've been in partnership with the City of Cupertino for a dozen years now, providing fair housing services as well as tenant landlord dispute resolution, which works proactively to prevent or deescalate the kinds of conflicts that lead to eviction and homelessness. We're especially grateful to the City of Cupertino this year. We do have plans for additional outreach and workshops. thanks to the bump and increase in funding that has been recommended. Regarding our fair housing activities, again, just to reacquaint everybody, we work to remove the discriminatory barriers and practices in housing. We investigate housing complaints of discrimination. We conduct systemic audits or testing for operational discrimination in the community. And we seek redress be addressed to victims of discrimination through enforcement under state and federal laws. We also conduct community outreach to inform people of what it is that we do, our free services therein, and we also educate property providers, property managers, and landlords around the fair housing standards for compliance. Our program supports, as I said, the de-escalation of housing conflicts to do whatever we can to stabilize that housing and prevent displacement or eviction Again, we are privileged to be in partnership with the city of Cupertino, and we thank you for, again, the recommendations to serve in a year. We look forward to doing that every day. Thank you.

Thank you. We have no remaining speakers in person and no hands raised on the chair.

Questions? I have one comment. It was the public... COMMENT PERIOD OF 30 DAYS. SAID THERE'S NO COMMENTS RECEIVED. I'M SURPRISED.

Public you know, you know, we did publish notices in the newspaper. We published physical copies of city hall and at the library. We have an outreach list of service providers and regional organizations that we maintain that we sent it out to. And we send multiple reminders about the meeting.

right it could be that you know this is essentially kind of rubber stamping the decision that housing commission made on march and then the city council reaffirmed right so a lot of people have gotten their comments out already in the first two meetings i say yeah that tends to happen so it's not uh unusual no but sometimes we still get more comments anyways right

All right. Do we have a, should we do a ask for a motion for approval?

I can approve approval of the approval of the report.

Okay. We have a second. Okay.

Commissioner Cunningham.

Aye.

Commissioner Sripathi is absent. Commissioner Jindy is absent. Vice Chair Jones.

Aye.

Chair Narayan.

Aye.

She raising and asleep.

Yeah, we want to I don't know. The study session for strategies to meet affordable housing, which of the housing we need to have a patient was for the 2020 to 2031 I'll think that events. The single presentation.

I'm sharing how the commission and it's making my for tonight is the second session to identify additional sites or low income housing and the housing elements in the story. We're going to start with a little bit of background on what that is. I understand we have some new commissioners serving on the board. The housing element is a state-acquired long-range plan for each city and county to produce since 1969.

And there's a long way to anticipate and meet housing rights.

And we do this in a number of ways. It's through our language primarily, but also through funding that we provide programs and then policies that we adopt into our code. The housing limit is one chapter within something known as the general plan for the city, right? There's multiple elements within the general plan. One of many chapters, however, it is unique and that has to be periodically updated or something known as the RENA. So what is the RENA? RENA is something that stands for Regional Housing Needs Allocation. It is a quota, essentially, that assign two cities by HCD, the State Department of Housing and Community Development, two cities and counties, for the purpose of each jurisdiction providing their own fair share of housing. And so that various income levels are equitable, and that's for the mobile housing to meet population and economic growth. So what that means, in a nutshell, bigger cities get a bigger arena than smaller cities. And then also, high-income cities will have a higher RENA than, say, lower-income cities. So, on this slide, we have our current RENA assignment, right, for the 2023 to 2031 housing development cycle. You see it right down. There's four income categories that we have to meet. Very low-income housing, which is anything below 50 percent of AMR. Low-income housing, between 50 to 80. Moderate, 80 to 120. And then above moderate, It's above 120, by the way, so it's market rate. This is just known singularly as a VENA. You can really think about it as four different requirements. We need to make sure we meet the requirement in four different categories at all times.

This is an example.

of a zoning map. This was created when our housing movement was certified in 2024 that identified some priority housing sites to be rezoned and identified as opportunity sites for affordable housing. We see there's a spot in the middle that's kind of carved out. That is the heart of the city-specific plan, which is centered around a city-speakable apartment. It has the most affordable housing element sites identified. That's not really necessary for tonight. This is just to give you an example of what can come out of this process. Why? Because we have to do periodic inventory maintenance. It's not just done once we get certified. According to government code 65863, you don't have to memorize it. It's a state law that makes that local governments must maintain adequate capacity to meet the obligations throughout the site, not just at the beginning. And so what that means is like, if there are priority housing sites, that do not produce housing at the expected densities that we have on our own. The city has 180 days to identify and make the best open placement sites. So let's talk about Cupertino's progress. We were certified on September 4th, 2024, right? And our renal requirement is gonna be active until 2031, right? And after that, presumably we'll be getting a new renal and new goals to meet. So far, proposals have been for medium density townhomes, right? On most of our sites, despite our zoning allowing for higher density rent, right? So rental projects, through our inclusionary housing laws, produce very low and low-income units as a part of that development, right, by design. But townhomes are ownership, which means they're producing moderate units. That's different from our expectation. And the other thing that is kind of different in our expectations is the Valpo Rise proposal project has recently been resubmitted under new SD 423 guidelines. That has large reduction for expected low and very low-income provisions, right? So that is to say, we are looking to identify additional sites. So for our process and what we're talking about tonight, the Housing Commission is the advisory body to City Council that provides recommendation for meeting affordable housing goals. Meeting our MENA is definitely an affordable housing goal. So we are going to be asking you guys to talk about strategies to generate additional MENA capacity specifically So we're very well in low compounding. What we're not asking you guys to do tonight is to start assessing sites. We're not talking about specific sites. We're not talking about specific zoning for those sites, specific land use for those sites. That is for the Planning Commission. And that will happen at their meeting. That will be happening a different day.

All right.

So we prepared a couple of proposed strategies to start the discussion. We'll go over them now. Number one, owner slash developer interest sites. That means the person who owns a site really, really wants to do housing on their site that they own. This is considered by ACD as a site that has the highest speed ability for redevelopment. And what I mean by that is, you know, when we identify sites, we have to submit this list of sites to ACD for them to accept it. And so that is what they consider to be sites that have the highest speed ability for redevelopment. So generally speaking, we would say the highest speed solution. in a site's inventory. Another strategy is major corridors. So the major arterials in the city, they typically have increased disenchanted accessibility, underlying infrastructure, and proximity to a lot of community resources. That often makes it a good opportunity for housing development. That also aligns with our city's sustainability and transportation goals. We want to increase density where it makes the most sense. And so what a major quarter you can imagine is a place like Stevens Creek Boulevard, the ends of Boulevard, Wolf Road, Homestead Avenue, and potentially more, right? If the housing commission says there's more. The third strategy to look at is underperforming commercial, right? So our current housing proposals that have been coming in have all been on underperforming commercial sites, and they have a lot of similarities, right? In the existing site use, they're older building stock, right? Older than 20 years, number one. Two, single story in height. Three, conjoined to a very, very large parking lot. And these are all class C commercial buildings that are just kind of right for your development. So looking at this strategy, we're considering, you know, high economic feasibility. for redevelopment. This last item is not necessarily a strategy for finding new sites, but it's just something to consider that we might want to recommend, which is thinking about minimum density. Because if we're going to suggest new sites, benefits us to try to prevent them coming in as more townhomes, which come in at the lowest end of allowable density, right? But by design, they are lower density than, say, apartments because they have to be on individually subdividable lots. So if you try to explore a higher minimum density, you can try to ensure that we produce a sufficient amount of units, right, on additional sites. And finally, other strategies, right? This is a study session. The Housing Commission is encouraged to suggest other strategies, which may have not been provided by staff tonight. We just want to also give a disclaimer, right? This recommendation may or may not be reaffirmed, right? They may be discontinued by the Planning Commission because they will be assessing those individual sites for inclusion, and by the line of that process, they may decide to either affirm the decision, right, or they might decide to go in a different direction. That's what they decide. But yeah, so for next steps after tonight, right, we're gonna take any suggestions that we get to our consultant, or trying to identify new sites, and hopefully we'll have a list for planning commission at a future meeting, which will be taken to city council, and hopefully first and middle to HCD. And we have another staff in attendance tonight, Connolly, our assistant director, who is kind of like our lead on all of our long range efforts, particularly general plan and housing element. And he'll be here to answer any questions you have. Hopefully that'll get him. So we'd like to open it now to the Commission.

Clarifying questions. Clarifying questions. You talked about the number of units being reduced, especially at Rice, after we submitted the initial plans, right? Because you're resubmitting under a different SB. So, and this is all state-mandated, right? So, but the state is the one that's mandating more housing. Why are they providing? I may be mistaken in my interpretation, so excuse me. I feel like the state is mandating more housing, but they're also providing loopholes for developers to reduce that density. Right? It seems like...

I don't know. There's nothing consistent about housing laws at all. So the goals that the state wants and the ways that they try to reach them don't align too often. One common denominator is they're trying to promote housing development. But you're right. When you look at the arena number was over four times greater than the last housing cycle. And we upzoned almost the capacity for 5,900 units. So we overshot it by 27, 28. But yeah, one of the things when Nikki touched on, we had a few factors, is you had a number of developers when our housing, before our housing element was certified, that submitted applications to lock in a lower density under SB 330, which they can do. So that freezes the regulations at that point in time. So we had a number of, The half dozen or so sites that have been approved came in lower than what was allowed. And they're all involved in townhomes. So the density is typically 17 to 21, 22 units per acre, nothing higher than that. Then even when we had the sites that did develop in the density range, which for townhomes is 20 to 35, they're all right around 20. No one's pushing much beyond that. So we're not getting 35. And of the housing element sites, so there's 58 of them, about 70%, 40 of them, or a minimum 50 per acre or greater from 50 to 80. We're not getting any development in that range. We only have one application that's for high density that hasn't been approved yet. And that's actually coming in well over 100 per acre. So I think the one thing we know is there's this dead zone. There's about 20 per acre. And then if you're going to get a project that's higher than that, it's much higher than that. So that's kind of where state and the arena, and this is not, you know, it puts you in a very difficult situation to try to get their numbers. One other thing, I think when you look at the chart, a little over 57% of the units were formal. Either very low, low, or moderate. The BMR requirements, as Nikki had said earlier, are either 15 percent for rental or 20 percent for unoccupied. So, part of the reason Cupertino's gotten to where we're looking for additional housing sites, one, even though we had a big buffer when we approved our housing element, in the low and moderate income categories, the buffer was pretty low. We're way over a market rate. We have, like, a buffer of 1,000. So, we knew we were close. Second thing is we've gotten a lot of housing applications. So we're doing great with that. We have a lot of applications on file and we've approved a lot. But each time you approve a project, you essentially lose capacity over what your housing element estimated. So if your housing element's assuming higher proportions of low or moderate income, and you can only require 15 or 20%, almost by approving housing, hurt yourself. Because the housing element, it's an estimate exercise. You're looking ahead. So that's, you know, in HCDs, the more density you have, they presume that's going to be more affordable. That's sometimes true, sometimes not. But that's how we got where we are. If you didn't have any applications come in, you'd have this thing frozen in time, and it would look great. But that's why we're already in a position where we're having to look at more sites. And in Cupertino's situation, like most other Bay Area cities, that if you're not looking at higher density sites along the corridor, you're going to keep looking for more sites. Because small projects or projects that are very dense don't really help the city with how large the numbers are these days, but thousands of units. So things like ADUs help because we get credit for them, but They can only make so much of a difference with the numbers we're talking about. So the strategies really aren't any different than what we looked at when we did the housing element a couple years ago. We tried to focus along Stevens Creek, De Anza, corridors like that where you could get greater density. And I think the other thing we've seen is where we have had projects in neighborhoods that are even coming in at townhome densities, there's even more opposition. You don't really have the resources there, so they're further away from places you might want to go, jobs, stores, things like that. But they are even more difficult to get through the approval process because middle of a single family neighborhood, a three-story townhome looks like really intense development. Along Stephens Creek Boulevard, less so. So not much has really changed in our strategy. I think we just found out more what we already know that midland densities not really helping us meet our agreement.

Okay. Now that the city website, this was uploaded earlier in the month I believe. This is the new landscape of housing law in California. It was uploaded just a couple of weeks back. in which I believe the, what it says is that the city has zero power to disapprove an application. Like if something comes in for development.

You're very limited. Yeah. Right.

Like, yeah. And then the developer is literally like, Oh, if they have the application, if they meet all the checklist items, then you have to approve kind of thing. Um, But again, how do you... Then there's no input from the community, which probably, I guess, many people will say no to having high-rise near the neighborhood, which is going to be harder. So I guess the only places that you see are Stevens Creek and the corridor, right? Beyond that, there doesn't seem to be anything else in Cupertino. One thought I was thinking, schools are closing. Elementary schools, I think three closed in the past or a couple of years back. What's happening to those sites? Are we able to, you know, do something with those?

You've got at least one where you've got a fairly successful private school. That seems to be one of those ongoing demands is... even though school enrollment is declining throughout the county. Because of no people. People have a shift from public to private.

Yes.

But I don't know, in terms of housing sites, we don't have any on school property. And I think a lot of it, you'd have that same issue if it's in the middle of a single family neighborhood. Density is only going to be so high. Nothing beyond townhome density. And you're very likely going to get a lot of opposition.

But at least the land is there, you know? I mean, De Anza College took away an apartment complex, right, which was providing affordable housing. I don't remember the number of units, but, you know, it went to the community college district. So in reverse, why can't the city take a state-owned school, you know, if it's not going to be closed? Again, I don't know what's happened to the other closed school sites, but if it's available, that's...

Certainly, but I think, like, you know, Nikki had mentioned, too, owner interest is a big factor. You know, the city doesn't get to decide, hey, these are the sites we want. HCD has to... So if the school district, I think, were to come forward and want to do like a surplus land process and follow that process, that could certainly happen. They're autonomous from the city anyway.

I mean, the city could send it to the school district. Hey, this is for your teachers or people who work in the district, right? Rather than saying it's housing, you know, just say this is for district teachers because we know like Rice is doing. right, having units for district employees and teachers, yes.

But I think the different challenge here is that the school district owns the land and the design process only should process through the state. So the city doesn't have authority in that process. We can make suggestions, certainly, but it doesn't suit district how they want to utilize it. Of course, yeah. If they want it, they absolutely can do it.

Maybe that could be a strategy they're suggesting, right? Allowing and zoning for flexible use for educational uses.

Yeah, you'd have to rezone if it's converting from a public school to a residential, whatever density.

But as a suggested strategy, I think that's what you're getting at.

So you said like one of the closed schools is occupied by private school, right? Like the, you're talking about tessellations and whatnot. Who gets, I mean, what they're paying like a lease money to who?

To the school district. School district still owns the land, right? They're a tenant.

I see. So the money goes to the state, typically. I mean, that's, I mean, the district, right? Goes to the school district. School district.

Could I ask a question? I was, before we get, further into more suggestions like that, which are very, very good part of the whole deal. But one of the things I was noticing in the new applicants were that the homes, although considered two young families at the age, yeah, they're big houses, 2,000 square feet or more. And so one part of the question I don't actually need an answer right now, but so how does that become the 10 units that are moderate income? How do those be affordable to those folks? But anyway, a separate question. Don't need an answer. Because what I'm leading to is that all of them have come in with that 2,000 or something square feet homes that are supposed to be, oh, you know, for young people coming in. And when we came in, you know, 1,600, 1,500, 1,300, those were that. And even those aren't the smallest homes, you know, that were available to young families coming in. So it just astounds me a little bit. Obviously don't understand the mindset of developers, period. And so my other question was with Filecode, I'll just call them that for ease. I did the, they send out their update on what they're doing. It was November 26th of 2025. And I did the calculations and percent of this first tranche of them that are going to be built, they're 17% of them to be below market rate. And then when they get finished with all of the homes, the percent of the total is 13%, which is below our rental requirement and although I think it meets our purchase. But then all of a sudden, ding, ding, ding, I went, oh, my gosh. It doesn't really say. It seems to kind of slide past that. Like, are these rental units? Like, I just was assuming they were. Or have they now turned some of their below-market homes into for-sale homes? And I don't know if you have that data.

They're all rented. they're what they're all right they're either low or very low there's no moderate or median

Because the way it was said, it just says, including 232 affordable family units and hundreds of market rate homes that will be offered for sale. It doesn't say that the below market rate are offered for rent. It's totally unclear. And I thought, because of all this other stuff that's going on, I made a bad assumption, right?

Yeah, they should have one that's still available. 2,669 total units. 356 are affordable, split equally between low and very low.

So it's like 178 very low, 178 low is what they're at now.

When the project first came in, it was 50%. Right, it was 50%. And now it's 13%. It's like 13 and a third.

And a third. Oh, yay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, exactly right. Okay. Well, anyway, so that answers that question. I don't know if you have a question about what are the sizes of these rental units?

I do not know. I've not looked at the floor plans. I think they're fairly small.

Okay.

Under a thousand square feet.

Maybe because they're the rentals as opposed to these others, which have been going in are for purchase. Moderate rate. Okay, so that answers those questions, except for the part where why, oh, well, actually, we found out. Talk to me. Said, oh, my gosh, what's this deal with the 13% and how can they get away with that and all? And you said, like, what you had said to us earlier was those laws don't all, you know, do that thing. And they don't. at least she, the local folks, they're just interested in housing, period. And I was so disappointed. I did not know that Yemi only cared about housing and not cared about below market rate housing. But that might be the case. And then she said, well, maybe in California you can work sometimes. Okay. But you're the one that's here talking to us. So anyway, yeah, I have to admit, I've gotten a little disappointed with the way the laws work. And I just found out the hard way like you did, not today, but recently, that the laws don't work together often and that the city does get stuck. Even when you're trying to do it right, you...

It's difficult to push affordability. Because even HCD, if you had a housing element policy, say, where you were going to, like, we're going to require 30% of our units to be affordable. Yeah. 20 is kind of their threshold. They don't want you to go above that. Oh, yeah.

Yes.

That's the dilemma cities like Cupertino find themselves in. Your arena is 57.5%. And you can't require more than 20. So right there on the town hall project, you can get the 20, but it's going to be difficult of the remaining 80% to argue any of these 23, 2400 square foot for sale units is affordable. You could, if you get smaller rental units, like, one-bedroom studio apartments, even if they're not need-restricted, those are likely affordable units that you can claim at low or moderate categories, even if they're, you know, essentially not, the rent is not restricted . Because by design, what they're actually renting for could be affordable. It's just so far, this city, we have not made a project like that. So the townhomes, you're not going to get more than 20 percent affordability on it.

Also, the city is also looking at units when we're creating these units or one of these discussions, also looking at how realistic is it to build these units that the city suggests. So, for example, if you were to provide a strategy to buy a certain number of units or ratio to district sites, that may not be accepted because the likelihood of that is very much certain. So that's something that I consider as well.

Okay. I understand. I'm sorry. I'll stop and let you go. Like on these townhomes where they have the for-purchase and they're theoretically moderate income, why are they so big? Is that required that they be as big as the market rate if they're trying to make something that's more affordable? I'm really not sure how that kicks in with... With them being so big, how is it that they are actually for moderate-rate income people?

So the price of a VMAR home is calculated based on the unit. On the? The bedroom count.

Oh, the bedroom count.

Within that unit.

Yeah.

Let's say it's like a three-bedroom. So we'll assume it's a family of three to four people.

Yeah.

And then you take the average income of someone in that income bracket. Okay. a three-person family, the moderate income bracket. And you can create basically an assumed annual income with that size divided by 12 to get your monthly payment. So you can divide by 30 to get an affordable monthly payment. Size is a requirement in our BMR manual that affordable units should be made comparable to market meetings in the same development. You can't make luxury up market rate and have really small, really low quality quality units. They've got to be comparable when they're similar in size, similar in features, similar in amenities. If they're making enormous units, that's probably because they want to sell those market rate units at a certain market, right? Because they are market rate developers.

Okay. I understand. Thank you. I don't like it, but I'm going to change it.

I'm going to prove that the market, the moderate and median units tend to be a little smaller. like the other average 2400 square foot, the affordable or maybe 1800 to 2000, tend not to be as big. But like Nikki said, the city's language is to keep them comfortable in terms of square footage, number of bedrooms, things like that. So.

Okay. I understand. Thank you. I have a question. So the recently, so I don't know whether it's been approved or not, but I think the Panera Bread, Waiju Coffee, those areas are going to be converted to town homes, I suppose. And then the Staples area also, right? Now, this is a main area where we could have high density homes, residences. So one, how can the city mandate a high density development? Number two, can we add more rental? Rental units tend to be more lower income for low-income families compared to ownership, right? Sure as there's none.

You can upzone more, but the two sites you're talking about, the Fontana's Restaurant, all of those were housing and property, but that was one of the SB 330 applications in the lower density. The Panera Bread, one of the four properties, was also a housing element site. It was also locked in at a lower density. Now, that one's even more interesting because about two-thirds of the units, a little under, are essentially single-family homes with very little space between them. So they look like townhomes, but, you know, They're very vertical, but they don't share common faults.

So the developer made the decision to change the density? I mean, you would think that the more units, they'd make more money, right?

That's not at all how it works. It's like I said, they're either going to come in about 20 or they're going to go over 100. Everything in between that, nobody's building it. At least for right now. So that's what has been happening. It really is all the developer's fault because once you have five or more units and you qualify for a state density bonus, how you design your project is up to you. And the city really has almost no ability to alter the design, like floor area, building height setbacks. All of those things are, if you look through all the projects we've approved, they're all waived uniformly. So I agree with you. I came up doing this thinking the more density, the more money you make.

Yeah.

And that's not the way it is.

Can I ask a question? I thought the term SB 330 was only attached to some of the applicants. You know, they came in before our housing element was approved and all that. Are we almost finished with those, or does it not make any difference because the same rules that you're talking about apply to any of the new ones, too? It won't matter that they're SB 330 or not.

SB 330 is in effect all the time, so it's the Housing Crisis Act. What it means is you file a preliminary application, which is very brief. You essentially meet a city's checklist, and you lock in what you have at this point in time. But if you were to do that now on a housing element site, it wouldn't matter because those sites have been up zoned. Yes. Okay. But what we did go through last time is the housing element was getting close to certified. That's where people locked in the lower density because they wanted to build. But SB 330 is still in effect.

And we still have some applicants that are using that particular.

It's not making a difference now. It's not making a difference now. The ones that locked that in, I think, have all gone through the approval process. Okay. But we still, like, you know, our density range is 20 to 35. You're only ever going to get around 20. No one's going to 30, 35. So this is why we're, if you're not getting that target range 50 or more, our highest density is 65 to 80. Like, unless you're, you need to hit that range in order to get somebody to build high density. to really make a difference with the numbers we were talking about.

You mentioned at the beginning, like there's a number of units that's approved under the housing element, right? And we have to keep track of that and make sure if it goes down in one of the sites, it needs to be made up somewhere else. We can't really lose that number. What holds us to that number? Because if the city can't need it,

States take is the city needs to meet it. Right. Which is why you end up looking for more sites. And you can't transfer. Like I said, we have a big buffer in market. We're never going to worry about that, but you can't say, well, we have a big buffer there. We're going to transfer that into the low and moderate income. Each income category is essentially its own region. And I look back when we went through the housing element, that's something I think is like. You probably should discuss it that way. It's like by income category, they're treated as entirely separate things. And like Cupertino has no problem meeting market rates reductions. Of course. That's easy. It's just the other categories. I think other cities have that same issue with how do you tell us over 50% of our housing has to be affordable in some category, but we can never require anything close to that. You the only way you get there is you have to have smaller, more affordable that by design units get built. So the city does have one against any project for Cupertino on a housing element site. It's coming in over 130 units per acre. But that's not approved. But that's because it's rental. And it's two thirds of it is one, one better studio units. So a project like that is not only going to get you a lot of units, but it's going to get you a lot of affordable units. That's just really rare. It's the only one we have in the file.

Do ADUs count in this?

Every unit counts. So like we get credit. If somebody builds a project on a non-housing element site, we get credit for it.

Okay.

But in terms of tracking what we've committed to through the housing element, only housing element sites, are what we're talking about. They're their own category.

I was going to ask you, because the minimum density sounds like a great strategy. I guess the question about it is, how does that, that's okay? We can do that and then the developers need to go with that once it's approved? Or is there going to be some more of that other wealth that didn't have that in place until here?

That could happen again. Yeah. Once you identify sites, if somebody was interested in a site and we were going to up zone it considerably, they could file an application before it's rezone happening.

Oh, okay. So that being said, I also then was wondering about, is there a way to maybe advertise to the affordable housing developers that, hey, We would really like you to come here and build some housing because they're willing, apparently, not to go for, you know, the highest thing. But how does that work? I mean, because we know we have Eden Housing for the teacher and we had Charities Housing for this other one. And I know there are, I don't know if there's enough of them, but there's a number of companies that are non-profit that build homes. How do we get them here interested in our.

We talked to everybody. When we went through the housing element, I mean, I started here almost three years on that. We met nonprofits, market rate developers, everybody. If the problem is who gets the site, who acquires the site, because they control it. So yeah, of the 58 properties, only two were 100% affordable. Perry Avenue, which is city-owned, that was entirely low. And the teacher housing site is just north of Galapagos also. That's the county.

That's county, right?

So the other 56 are pretty much whoever is going to develop them.

So can we provide more incentives to developers? I mean, like funding, you're giving funds to all the non-profit organizations. I mean, it feels like a bad thing to do, but can you say, hey, Deborah, you know, we'll give you this incentive of a percentage or whatever. If you build more rental units, more higher density units, I don't know. The city can maybe there's a tax incentive or some sort of incentive can the city provide to encourage rather than say they want to turn them and just say, okay, go ahead kind of thing, right? Well, what can the city provide? This is like keeping a business, right? Like Apple, I know the city's giving them a lot of incentives to keep them here. So can something like that be done?

When a developer comes and proposes affordable housing beyond our minimum requirements, we... do grant incentives in terms of impact fee waivers. So like park impact fee waivers, there's like a street sewer one, right? A bunch of different ones to basically loan it across construction. That helps a lot when it comes to kind of building that funding stack, right? If you want to get 100% affordable housing though, there's a lot of things that need to come together to make that happen. And number one, being tax credit awards, because that makes up the bulk of their funding stack. And typically, to be awarded those, you need to be an established nonprofit developer that can demonstrate that you have the experience to do such a development. So we can give local incentives, right? But ultimately, you're pretty much only ever gonna see affordable nonprofit developers coming in with those kinds of proposals, right? Because they're the only people that can win those tax credits.

They can't decide as a regular developer. They can't decide, you know, I'd like to build some 100%. I'll just do that because I've made a lot of money here, and so I'll just do that. They couldn't just decide to do that. They would have to meet some kind of

a separate entity to do their affordable development, right? I think by statute, right, I think they can only award tax credits to non-profit, because they don't want to be awarding tax credits to for-profit developments. That's something that can be kind of taken advantage of. Okay.

I have a question. When residents are building ADUs, that's not always for the purposes of housing. And so how do you get credit for local residents just wanting an expansion or an annex to their housing? How do we get credit for that?

If it's an ADU, we get credit for it through the building. It's seen as a new unit. Regardless of how it's used, we can't track that. If it's a family member, if it's rented out, the city gets credit for it.

And then also, but you say it doesn't count in the housing element. In the housing element. Yeah, it doesn't count.

But yeah, every April 1st, you submit your housing report to the state to show what you entitled of what you built. And you get credit for those things, whether it's the housing element site or not.

And you also get a certain percentage of that is credited as below market rate, even though you can't track that, right? A certain percentage gets credited as being marked. even though it's not necessarily here.

And you can't really- It's not deed restricted, but it's kind of like I was saying, was if you build a studio apartment, like it would be crazy to say 25 square foot townhome in a studio apartment.

Yeah.

It's deed restricted that they have equal affordability. They don't. And AUs are typically a single 10% market rate, and it's like 10, 30, 30, 30. So you do get credit for the low and moderate levels.

Let me talk about very low-income, low-income, moderate income. For, let's say, the example of three to four family members, what are we talking about? What's the demographic?

Oh, I have to look that up. The state releases based on the county you live in. What is your your average median income for that county for like a four person family? And then they also break down to like, OK, what if you're a three person family, two person, one person? And it's all going to be like, you know, increasing the bigger the family. Right. And then from there, there's like a bell distribution of like who is below 80% of that distribution, that's the low income, who is below 50% of that distribution, the very low income for each of those families' filings. That's how they calculate it. They release those every year. So you can actually, so I can send it to you. And then they also release what is your maximum allowable rent per category, right?

This is county-based or city-based? County-based. County-based.

County. Yeah, Santa Clara is the highest state. I think the family of four is like 192, 195. It's getting closer to 200,000.

This is the median income, the talking box, I guess.

Right, median.

But depends on which part of the county, too. Sure. Like Cupertino kind of on the higher end compared to, say, South San... Sure, South.

Yeah, it's not perfect.

Yeah. It is an idea.

Sure. Can we go to public comment? Yeah. Yes. We have no speakers in person and no hands raised virtually.

Okay. So we this is just a study session. So we just

Yeah, all the suggestions, right? We're taking these to our consultant as we try to identify more sites for the housing element, right? And we heard a lot of good ideas tonight, right? Some suggestions that we can try to explore. Now, the feasibility, we'd have to look into, right? Because ultimately, there's two audiences for the housing element, right? There's a local audience trying to get it through by city council, and then there's the state, who may or may not accept those choices. But yeah, we'll try to do our best to try to marry those two.

Next item for the agenda. Oh, we have to vote on this one. Are we voting on this thing?

You can vote to close discussion.

That's what I thought. To close the discussion? To close the discussion, okay. Motion to close the discussion? I'll make a motion to close the discussion. Any seconds? Second.

Commissioner Cunningham. Aye. Commissioner Srivastavi is absent. Commissioner Jindy is absent. Vice Chair Jones. Aye. Chair Ryan.

Aye. The next item on the commission reports. I have one that attended the mayor's meeting for the commissioners update last week. It was really interesting. I'm attending as a chair for the first time and with the new mayor. So I've got to say that our new mayor is very energetic with a lot of ideas and I love her new initiative. She has a new initiative called Move More with Maya Moore. So that's her new initiative. She has all these activities planned. And the upcoming in the next month is yoga and Bollywood in the park. So I'm very excited about getting people to move. And I think we did like a bike to work event last month or last week. Anyway, and then the main thing that I wanted to share was she emphasized that there is this information memos in the city website, which after hearing that, I went, that's like tons of valuable information up there, which I think very useful for all of the commissioners to keep up to date on and encourage residents to read that up, you know, just to know that they're, what's happening in the city. So this is really interesting.

Well, question about that. Maybe one of you knows, is that something you can sign up to have sent to you? Just like you have other things signed that you go in and sign up and you get information. Yeah.

They might have a little bit of that. I'm not sure. Yes, I promise. Can you?

I mean, I can certainly. Like once something is uploaded. Great, because then you can sign up for it and be sent to you and then you're going to have to go in each time. So if that were possible, that would be.

Yeah. So the three memo that I found really useful for our commission is the housing element no debt loss law requirements that was uploaded. So you just called housing element no debt loss law requirements.

Yeah.

That was uploaded on Jan of 2026. And then the March 2026 memo was Status of Homelessness in Cupertino. And then the third one was a May 15th memo, The New Landscape of Housing Law in California. So I think these are really good memos for us to be aware of and read upon. And then she was continuing her monthly chat series with the mayor, and she provided updates on the Wolf Road and I-280 improvement that's happening. So those were the main things. And, of course, the other commissions gave updates on each of their commissions. We can just go to their meeting minutes and read a lot of information to just quickly get. But the planning commission is where I heard about the the town hall, development on Bandley Drive, and then that Voyager and Panera Bread places to be replaced. Oh, the other important thing, the Public Safety Commission, they talked about an app called Genasys, G-E-N-A-S-Y-S, app to download on your phones, because this is like an address-based emergency notification. So it will... For example, if you're in a particular area, so if there's an emergency for that area, you get that notification. Compared to the Alert SCC, which is a county-based, So she talked about the two emergency patient systems. And the Technology Commission is working to develop strategies to reduce AI-generated scams and frauds, which is common. So that was the mayor's meeting. And last month, Commissioner Cunningham and myself attended the homelessness workshop held by the council. So that was really eye-opening for us because there were nonprofit organizations and city officials and people with lived experience who came and attended. We talked about the whole workshop was in like four focus areas, how to prevent and then how to help them. So it was really eye-opening.

It was part of it a long time.

Did you attend? Okay, yeah, yeah, so it's a really nice workshop. Thank you so much.

Oh, yeah, of course, yeah.

That is very nice, really good talk. Okay, so we have the next item is future agenda setting. Do you want the staff reports? Yeah, we have some. Okay.

Yeah, one of these last month, the City Council approved an update to their commission's handbook. So we just printed out some copies.

Are there any new changes? I'm not a copy.

Well, I guess it's safe. I'm probably interested in that. It added a new section that all commissions may now have an alternate non-voting member. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's the, you know, I kind of just automatically upgrade whenever there's a vacancy, right? To try to like, when there's a difficulty, right? Finding a, so you guys might be getting a six time soon, I guess. Could be cool.

So that'll be when we have the next round of selection.

That'll be when the city clerk has the capacity to do recruitments for every single commission, I think. Okay.

So that's, we said non-voting alternate member.

Yeah. They kind of like get automatically upgraded once there's a vacancy, right? So like they can be there to like stay at one and then once there's a vacancy, they kind of get smaller.

Yeah. Okay. That way they would be more knowledgeable. Yeah. Okay, that sounds very interesting.

Thank you for asking. I have one announcement. So back in December, we met on study items to include for further anti-displacement and tenant protections. We talked with city mayor's office about how we can basically build this in to our work plan. And procedurally, we think the way that we want to proceed with this is that I can basically draft some kind of like letter or memo asking the council to basically add, we had three items that were policy items, right? One was eviction protection, rent stabilization, and one was kind of like deposit fee regulations. So adding those for study into like the city work plan for like maybe like the next three years, right? So kind of use the same, but really look at each one individually. And of course being next to you guys, right? Where you're watching that and take it to city council. So that might look like basically me drafting a letter and having maybe the chair, right? Sign it and send it to city council to request it via city board plan. But yeah, so that's an update on that. Okay.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear everything you said about what that letter is about.

It's the tenant protection item that we studied in December. So we're going to be asking the chair to sign a letter to some city council, basically asking that that be added into our city work plan. Oh, into the city. Okay, thank you. I'm going to memorialize for the next, say, like three years of work. We're going to be looking at each one of these individually and citing them for proposals.

Yeah. Great idea. Okay. Okay. Before we go on to the future agenda, if we don't, so if you have come up with any other new strategies for housing element, we can just email to you. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, anything else that we can come up with any? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Future agenda setting. Do we want to add

Yeah, I was wanting to add a future agenda item. And so I can discuss, well, we don't discuss it. We just say what it is. But I had talked about it.

You're talking about the parking lot?

Safety parking. Because the idea came from the mountain. So you'll have it later. We don't have to discuss it here. I understand we don't discuss the stock here. But the main idea is to create a safe parking plan that is more robust and all that, similar to the one that's in the article. I think you gave me a copy of that? Yes.

Okay. That was for Mountain View.

Well, it is. But that being said, the city, the county supervisor is asking, wanting to work with everyone to create a regional look at it. And so I'm thinking, would want to be in it the article is anything about us being in it and i would like us to be in it so i wanted to add it to our list of um um future agenda list so that we can discuss it and perhaps urge the city council to join because i'm not sure how the process works but that's that's the entity yeah do we have a second to that item

I think we also wanted to have a study session for the BMR, right?

We will have a session with you guys for August 30th.

Well, that was the one that you sent.

That's right. And that will be to study the housing mitigation manual. what it does, what it requires. And I think there was a request just on like, what's been the BMR inclusionary housing that's produced and that we can find it. So where you guys, the trail went full that around 2007-ish, after that, the files are all like in paper and like in various, I don't know, it's hard to find records from older than that. So we can basically go back to 2007.

For what?

For historical housing production.

Oh, historical housing production. Because the purpose of understanding that, the low market rate manual, I was kind of surprised that after being on this commission for seven years, I didn't know anything about the for purchase piece of BMR because we had never talked about it. It was just never part of our, so anyway. I've had to come up to speak pretty fast, and I was thinking for coming up to speak pretty fast on everything anyway, it might be useful to go over with people that might be more acquainted.

Will we have somebody to come and give the presentation kind of thing for the study session, or what would be the format of that?

So the study session, just to be consistent with the BMR Positive Mitigation Annual in August, is going to be me. When the item for exploring updating our fee schedule, our PMR fee schedule, which is a part of the housing mitigation manual, for that we'll probably have a consultant there with us who kind of does these kind of financial analysis for

When you say fee schedule, not talking about the 20% and the, what are we talking about for the fee schedule?

Let's save that for office. That's basically going to be the whole topic. What are the fees we collect for? It basically informs what goes into the BMR fund.

Oh, that.

Got it. Okay, thank you. No problem.

Are there any other items that need to be added? Are you ready to adjourn the meeting? Okay, 7-14, I adjourn the meeting. I call a motion to adjourn the meeting. Okay.